


Letters

by elizabitchbennet



Category: Red vs. Blue
Genre: Angst, Character Study, Gen, post-prequels, rip private jimmy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-11
Updated: 2016-06-11
Packaged: 2018-07-14 09:23:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,017
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7165409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elizabitchbennet/pseuds/elizabitchbennet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's something weird about Church's face.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Letters

Leonard Church wakes up from a coma and his body feels like the poorly fitting tux that his mother had made him wear to a cotillion ball when he was seventeen. The baby blue armor he’s dressed in (when did his armor turn baby blue?) pinches in places he isn’t used to and gaps open in others. It’s as if he’s gone through halfway puberty when he was unconscious and woken up with gangly limbs and a distorted sense of how his body should work.

The weirdest thing, though, is Church’s face.

His hair is still brown, skin still pale, dark circles are still under his eyes, but is that his nose? Has it always been that wide? He thinks he remembers that his eyes are green, but how can that be when the pair in the mirror are as blue as his armor. Church thinks and thinks but can’t seem to really remember much past watching his girlfriend beat a man to death with his own skull. Captain Flowers says that he'll feel more like himself as time goes on, but he feels scrambled and confused and oddly hollow to the point where he's not sure he knows how to be a person anymore. Maybe that's why he doesn't feel at home in his own (?) body.

He runs a hand down his not-quite-familiar-face (there’s no way his fingers were always this stubby) and sighs. If this is what PTSD is gonna be like, he's screwed.

* * *

 

In his spare time Epsilon writes letters.

After his memory returned (the irony of an AI that is memories embodied forgetting itself has yet to cease being morbidly funny) there is a whole new world unlocked to him. Once he acknowledges that he is not man, but machine, the way he thinks is different. Suddenly he’s not thinking one thing at a time, he’s thinking fifty. The human brain can’t run at one hundred per cent of its capacity, but an AI certainly does.

Epsilon misses being human. He misses the dullness and the simplicity and the smallness of his mind, the comfort and coziness of synapses and tissue. But he cannot go back, so he works instead.

He runs risk assessments. He runs the armor enhancements. He runs data entry software and the odd search algorithm on old freelancer files.

Slowly but surely, he runs out of things to think about.

He’s an AI, a computer made with the intent that he would expand and build on himself, grow like a real person would. He is intelligent software and without meaning to he keeps exceeding his own boundaries. Epsilon (Church? Alpha? Whoever he is now) has outgrown his own mind, or maybe his mind has outgrown him, but either way he is bored and broken and there’s only one way that can ever end (when it comes down to it, it doesn’t matter which version of himself he is today-- each one has gone crazy in his own way). So he writes to keep the little bit of his sanity that he still has.

He writes letters to Carolina ( _Don’t you ever forgive him for what he did to you, for what he made you both into. But forgive me. I am not him.)_ and saves them on her memory unit in case he ever glitches out or goes away.

He writes letters to Tucker and Caboose ( _You’re the biggest dickweed disappointments in this galaxy. I love you. I’m proud of you. Please don’t leave, even if I do.)_ , sure that they already know what he has to say.

He writes letters to the reds _(You didn’t have to do all that you’ve done. Thank you. P.S. You suck)_ , to the soldiers on Chorus _(I’m sorry this happened to you, I’m sorry that I’m at the root of your world’s war)_ , to the Chairman of the Board _(Power like this has a price, old man. The Director paid it, and so will you)._

He writes to himself ( _Alpha, I know why you did it, but I still wish I didn’t have to take your place.) (Director, how could someone ever hate themselves enough to do what you have done to us, to the universe we live in?) (DeltaSigmaThetaIotaEtaOmegaGamma pleasecomebackpleasedontbedeadpleasedontbegoneimsoscared)_.

He writes to Allison _(I'm sorry)_.

He writes to Tex  _(I lied)._

The letters aren’t really meant to be read, half the people he writes to are dead or destroyed anyway. There’s only one that actually makes it in the mail.

* * *

_Dear Maggie,_

_You don’t know me and I don’t know you, but I owe you this letter._

_A while back you were with a man named Jimmy, a private in the UNSC. I know that on public record Jimmy was listed as MIA, but I’m writing to tell you that he’s dead. I don’t want to upset you or to reopen old wounds, but I figure that you deserve closure just as much as anyone else that’s been touched by these godawful wars._

_It won’t be any comfort to you-- or hell, it might, what do I know?-- but Jimmy died bravely and selflessly. He sacrificed himself for the greater good of the war he was fighting in, for me, actually. Just by being himself, his big-hearted do-gooder self, Jimmy saved my life at the cost of his own._

_He talked about you a lot, how you always said to do the right thing and how much he wanted to make you proud, how he wanted to be able to look you in the eye when he got home. Jimmy carried you with him everywhere, in every decision he made. He loved you in the purest possible way you can love a person (believe me when I say that’s something you should hold on to)._

_I’m sorry if this letter drags up bad memories, I know a thing or two about how horrible those can be. But I wanted to do the right thing for once. I hope this was the right thing._

_Thank you for making Jimmy the man he was. I’m sorry he’s gone._

_Leonard L. Church_


End file.
